2/5 Rancors - Being tapped to write a novelization of a film as massively successful as a Star Wars movie has got to feel like a bit of a thankless job, artistically speaking. Sure, the exposure and potential earnings would probably excite many a potential author, but it has to be rather limiting to any lofty literary aspirations a writer might have. I can also imagine that Lucasfilm is likely quite restrictive of writers taking liberties with the adaptations of the Star Wars films, especially when the book in question is of the first Star Wars film to be made in sixteen years.
So how does Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace stack up as a novel? Unfortunately, I wasn't terribly impressed. I don't think it makes sense to evaluate a movie novelization on its story, as the story was already dreamed up and written in script form before Terry Brooks was brought on board. What I look for in a good movie novelization is an expansion of the story presented in the film, an in-depth exploration into characters and their motivations, and tasty tidbits that either didn't make it onto the screen due to running time or simply because they were better left to prose.
The book starts off well with several chapters devoted to young Anakin on Tatooine. Anakin races Sebulba in a Podrace briefly alluded to in the film, he meets with his buddies Kitster and Wald and rambles around Mos Espa, and has an exciting encounter with a wounded Tusken Raider out in the desert, whom Anakin nurses back to health. Surely Terry Brooks couldn't have known about Anakin's eventual slaughter of the Tusken Raider tribe that kidnapped his mother in Attack of the Clones, but it plays out like he did. Young Anakin's unthinking care for the Tusken adds pathos and a tinge of irony to the bloodbath he unleashes on the desert tribe in Clones.
However, after this opening, the book quickly settles into essentially being a blow-by-blow account of the events of the film. It uses many Star Wars terms freely without much description and also uses some that don't seem to be quite "Star Wars" at all.
I find Terry Brooks' writing style workmanlike - he tells a story in a very straightforward and easy-to-follow way but rarely illuminates a particular page with anything that leaps out and grabs you by the proverbial throat. The book does a lot of telling you what characters are feeling without actually showing you what they feel - there's not much subtlety in simply stating a character is sad, angry, or happy.
The two-rancor rating may be a shade harsh, but I hoped to get more out of this novelization than a flat retelling of the film. Books can go places films cannot, and I didn't feel this book tried very hard to do that. I did enjoy the movie The Phantom Menace and find it an entertaining story, but reading the book didn't add much to my run through the Expanded Universe.
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